The Guild
Wars E3 for Everyone Client is now available, laying the groundwork for the
public beta test of the upcoming MMORPG that will run during E3
(story). Word is: "Download the client - Register your account -
Come join us May 12-14 and play Guild Wars! - Remember! You can invite as many
friends as you like to join you! - Note: Gameplay access will not be available
until 12:01AM Pacific on May 12th." The demo debuted on
GameSpot
DLX, and the download is now mirrored on
Gamer's
Hell and
Worthplaying.

It's simple, really, why a lot of people hate subscription fees. I'd like to give Star Wars Galaxies a whirl too (well, actually after reading about it, I wouldn't, but that would leave you without a perfectly good anecdote). The problem is that I have too little free time, due to having to study and work to be able to do the former. So no way in hell am I paying $15 a month for something I'd only be able to play for maybe 8 hours tops per week. OTOH, I'd've payed for the box if it where free to play for the rest. And there are many others who don't play MMORPG's for this reason.

I've never understood the hatred people have for monthly fees. Most MMORPGs are the type of games that provide hundreds of hours of gameplay. When I finish my free trial of an MMORPG, I'm more than happy to pay $10-$15 for another month, knowing that I'll probably play for at least 40 hours (If I'm the hardcore type, more like 80 or even 160)during that time. Consider that the average FPS nowadays provides 10 hours of gameplay at a price of $40, I think that's a bargain.

In any case, any game that is supposedly like diablo is worth trying as far as I'm concerned.

Well bloom toggling is good since it's a post rendering effect. I imagine they'd want the game to run smooth on anyone's machine (and it certainly does) so toggling it off will get you a big performance boost on lower end cards.

Not to mention some people just don't dig the bloom effect. The majority of folks I've spoken with do like it, but there are a select few that don't so it can't hurt to provide the option.

Yes, the game has a NEW graphic engine. Anything pre-december 2003 is on the old crappy graphic engine. All the new screenshots are how it actually is in-game.. without the bloom it still looks really good (and why would you take bloom off? )

"No the key distinction is whether it has tons of instance outdoor areas or not. Lots of mmorpgs have instanced dungeons now but not forests."

It does have instanced outdoor areas that are pretty damn big. In fact, I've seen more instanced outdoor areas than dungeon ones to be honest.

"Yes and they dont come out and say it's not one either, pussy footing around the question to confuse people. It's either a mmorpg or not I dont care if it has some mmorpg features. Even now most people think it's just a reg mmorpg that yo dont have to pay because of misleading stuff like that."

It's hard to define what it is, I don't think they're really pussy footing around. I mean, sure it's not MMORPG in the sense that it's one big map with 1000's of people on it. But it's got the best components of MMORPG's to make it basically be an MMORPG. You have a server with tons of people on it (all the same server), towns where people interact, trade, socialize, NPC's that give quests, instanced areas where people can focus on doing quests on their own and pvp areas where more people can get together and duel out. Seems more than a typical single player game with an online component to me. Not to mention that this is run on their own servers not player's PC's.

People please look at the date of images before you start commenting about 'no bloom' or 'god it looks horrible!'

This game a year ago had a different art style, no developed art, and focused more on getting the core fundamentals into it before focusing on art. Over the past year they have focused heavily on getting their art style down and it looks down right pretty.

This is gamespot's screen shot page. They show all the pictures during the development of the game. The images you are referencing with no bloom and bad looking art were done in 5/14/03. The newer art and images were shown on 1/07/04 -that's a full 6+ months later.

So there you go. You won't see any non bloomed ugly looking pics come out now because that was the old art style. Plain and simple.

Did you read 'his' post? 'He' calls people 'idiots' for understanding why LARGE SCALE MMO's charge a subscription fee, 'he' puts blinders on (hence being uninformed) and uses GW as a reference point to why MMO's shouldn't charge a pay to play fee when GW is only a pimple on a large scale MMO's ass. GW != EQ. If your going to start calling people names, then at least be informed. Understand? Good.